The pathway leading to the biosynthesis of branched chain amino acids (valine, leucine and isoleucine) is vital to the survival of plants. This pathway, and the enzymes promoting it, is vulnerable to several classes of highly potent herbicides including imidazolinones, sulfonylureas, sulfonamides and pyrimidyloxybenzoates. Such herbicides act by inhibiting acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS), the first enzyme functioning in the pathway.
Recently, weed populations have been discovered which are resistant to AHAS-inhibiting herbicides (D. L. Shaner, Herbicide Resistance in Weeds and Crops, ed. J. C. Caseley, G. W. Cussans and R. K. Atkin (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991), 187-198). These resistant biotypes contain an altered AHAS enzyme which is no longer inhibited by these herbicides. Once such a resistant weed population has developed, the weed management program has to be changed to prevent the propagation of the resistant weed. Therefore, a method to rapidly determine if a weed population has developed resistance to an AHAS-inhibiting herbicide would have great utility and would permit the agriculturalist to adapt his weed management program to control the resistant weed more effectively.
Because several classes of AHAS inhibiting compounds are highly potent herbicides, there is an ongoing search to discover new and more effective AHAS inhibitors. To identify these new inhibitors, assays are used to measure the extent of AHAS inhibition caused by the compounds' use. However, the assays currently employed are often arduous, expensive and/or time-consuming.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for determining whether a compound inhibits acetohydroxyacid synthase.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a method for determining whether a plant is resistant to an acetohydroxyacid synthase inhibitor,
These and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description thereof set forth below.